Portable computing devices including personal media players such as MP3 (Moving Pictures Expert Group, MPEG-1, audio layer 3) players, laptop PCs (personal computers), PDAs (personal digital assistants), mobile phones, smart phones, and similar devices commonly use compact and lightweight headsets, which are often called earphones, earbuds, headphones, or headsets, to render voice, audio content, or an audio portion of video to a user. Portable media players typically provide separate left-channel and right-channel signals to the earphone set to produce a stereophonic effect. Each of the left-channel and the right-channel signals may be outputted by separate speaker units of the earphone (e.g., left speaker unit and right speaker unit).
The cable system that generally interconnects each speaker unit with one another (e.g., left speaker unit with right speaker unit) and/or each speaker unit with a media player are generally a fixed length. Manufacturers of the earphones generally choose a default fixed length based on physical characteristics of likely customers from the general population demographics. However, in many instances, the default fixed length may not be suitable for all users or for all uses. For example, the default fixed length may not work well for users having a different size or height than the size or height used by the manufacturer to determine the default fixed length. Further, for example, in a wired system (e.g., where the cable system of the earphone is physically connected to the media player), a user might want to position the media player at different locations (e.g., attached to their waist, attached to their arm, on a table) that can result in too little or too much slack in the cable system. Similarly, for wireless systems (e.g., where the earphone may be connected to the media player over a short range wireless technology (e.g., Bluetooth)), the user may find the default fixed length between each speaker unit is not convenient for different activities or situations (e.g., running versus sitting).
Thus, improvements in audio earphones are desired.